The Plot Against Harry

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All Rise...

Judge Neal Solon is being called to testify as an unindicted co-conspirator.

The Charge

"The week I go in, there's a ten percent drop…Turn your back and
everything goes to hell." —Harry Plotnick, on the state of his
numbers racket the day he's released from prison.

Opening Statement

In 1969, director Michael Roemer (Nothing But a Man) and
cameraman/co-producer Robert M. Young put together a film called The Plot
Against Harry. It was a comedy—but test audiences didn't laugh, and
distribution companies balked at releasing it. So Roemer tucked the film away in
a closet somewhere. Twenty years later, he decided to show the movie to his
kids.

Roemer took the film to be transferred onto videotape. While transferring
it, the film technician began to laugh. After confirming that the technician
did, indeed, find the film funny, Roemer realized that he hadn't been crazy to
think that the film was funny after all. He took the The Plot Against
Harry and began submitting it to film festivals, and after twenty years of
waiting, it finally got the reception it deserved.

Facts of the Case

Harry Plotnick (Martin Priest, Nothing But a Man) is a small-time
Jewish crime boss who runs a numbers racket out of his hotel in New York. Nine
months ago, he was sent to prison. Now he's getting out, and expects to jump
back into a business that is exactly the way he left it. Not surprisingly,
things don't work out that way. From the moment that Harry sets foot outside the
prison, things aren't quite right—his driver, Max (Henry Nemo), is late.
It doesn't occur to Harry then, but this is the first sign that the world he
knows is slowly unraveling.

The Evidence

In 1969, Philip Roth published his classic Portnoy's Complaint. It was
released to wide critical acclaim and helped to define contemporary
Jewish-American literature. Simultaneously, Roemer and Young were trying to
distribute their small, comic gem of a film, also focused on the Jewish-American
experience. Thirty-five years later, there are still few people who have heard
of The Plot Against Harry, yet New Video has seen fit to release it in a
worthy DVD package. I'm glad they did.

One thing that perplexes me is why this film did not get the attention it
deserved in 1969. It is an obvious question that co-producers Roemer and Young
ask themselves in the interview included as a supplement, but the answer is
elusive. While I won't give away their theories, I will put forth my own.

By the end of the 1960s, the writings of Philip Roth and Saul Bellow had
proven that there was an audience for fiction detailing the Jewish-American
experience. Portnoy's Complaint was a number one bestseller in the same
year that The Plot Against Harry failed to even appear on the proverbial
radar screen. Disregarding the sexual obsessions of the titular character in
Portnoy's Complaint, the Roth book and the Roemer/Young film deal with
many of the same themes, caricatures, and plot devices, including, surprisingly
enough, crippling constipation. The difference between the two is the
self-awareness of the protagonists.

In Portnoy's Complaint, Alex Portnoy is an exaggeration, playing up
the absurdities of the world around him. Roth uses a clever literary device to
allow Portnoy's self-analysis to be center stage. We instantly know when to
laugh, because Portnoy essentially points at the humor and flails wildly.

Conversely, the titular character in The Plot Against Harry is an
understatement. Harry Plotnick is unaware of the absurdity around him. He
doesn't cry out to be laughed at; instead, Martin Priest, as Harry, plays the
straight man to Roemer's script, a script that subtly draws out the humor in his
life. Priest never plays up a joke, let alone overplays one. Priest's
performance is so deadpan that it's easy to be baffled if you don't realize that
you are supposed to laugh.

But you are supposed to laugh, and if you don't know that when you
start the film, you do slowly realize it as you are drawn in. Harry Plotnick is
a man who is self-involved enough to miss the evolution of the world around him.
He is mildly paranoid, but about all the wrong things: he hides his profession
from his doting sister and uses a false name in the hospital, but he trusts that
his grunts are loyal. His obliviousness and reluctance to evolve contribute to
his becoming less important, and his ex-wife's family and his parole officer
drive him to need honest employment. He decides to go into the kosher catering
business with his "ex-brother-in-law" Leo (Ben Lang, Bye Bye
America), but even in this, he can't escape his past.

While Harry is the focus of the film, the rest of the cast turns in good
performances as well. The most notable are Henry Nemo's performance as Harry's
driver and right-hand man, and Ben Lang's performance as Leo. The saddest part
of The Plot Against Harry's cold initial reception is that no one who
appears on screen here went on to find much success in the film world. Most
appeared in no more than two films after The Plot Against Harry.

Considering its origins, The Plot Against Harry looks and sounds
incredible. The rich, black and white picture is presented in anamorphic
widescreen. There are some noticeable specks, but none that detract from the
experience. The stereo audio track, too, does its job solidly, conveying the
dialogue and ambient noise without unnecessary fanfare.

Rounding out this presentation on DVD are two worthwhile extras. The first
is a pair of filmmaker biographies. On most discs, biographies are uninformative
and redundant; in this case, both contained information that I could not find
about either filmmaker by simply searching the internet. They include references
to work on films not mentioned in either filmmaker's IMDb entries, and
information about what they are doing now.

The second, more substantial extra is a 35-minute-long conversation between
the filmmakers, Michael Roemer and Robert M. Young. It is unclear whether the
conversation was organic or prompted by questions from an interviewer, but we
see the two men talking about their pasts—about working together, The
Plot Against Harry, and why they ultimately went their separate ways. Roemer
tends to dominate the conversation, but both men participate actively, and the
conversation is worth watching from start to finish.

Closing Statement

The Plot Against Harry has been hailed as a great, undiscovered
classic, and I can't disagree. The laughs I got weren't belly laughs. They were
quiet laughs that matched the humor on screen, but they were plentiful. Both
times I watched it, this film put a smile on my face for the better part of
eighty minutes. As an added benefit, I got to watch a 1960s period piece that
looks and feels authentic because it was actually filmed back then. The only
thing that made me look twice was Harry's car phone. Did they have those in the
1960s? And how did they work with all those wires?

The Verdict

Harry Plotnick is hereby found not guilty and released from the digital
judicial system. As for the charges against him in the New York State courts,
I'm afraid he's out of luck. They're well beyond my jurisdiction.